


It's What You Do

by c3mf



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-04 04:10:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c3mf/pseuds/c3mf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin knows who and what is worth defending, even if he never has much occasion to show it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's What You Do

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cabin Pressure fic meme [here](http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/4207.html?thread=5413999#cmt5413999).

As the baby of the family, Martin had never really felt the insistent urge to rush into the fray on the behalf of either of his siblings. That kind of defending was left to Simon and Caitlin because well… he was _Marty_ and it was their responsibility to take care of _him_ and keep him out of trouble—whether they particularly wanted to or not.

Sure, they scuffled (Simon and Martin did, anyway. They both knew better than to drag Caitlin into any of their roughhousing—Dad would have their heads for that and well, she was the _girl_ ), they rowed until they shouted themselves hoarse (Caitlin _did_ get involved in those—and won, most times, if only because she could pitch her voice so bloody high), but God help anyone outside the family who so much as thought of looking at any of them the wrong way.

_(“You don’t have to love each other,” Dad had told them once, all three sat on the sofa as they endured a scolding as a result of one of their latest spats. “Hell, you don’t even have to **like** each other, but the minute you lot step foot outside this house, it’s the three of you against the world, so you watch each other’s backs because you are all you’ve got. Have I made myself clear?”)_

Still, there wasn’t much defending to be done when your siblings were almost a decade older than you were. Standing up to someone who insulted them then didn’t come across as stalwart, but rather ended up as childishly petulant and sweetly ignorant. More often than not, Martin’s brotherly attempts at defensiveness were mocked and if he were truthful, quite laughable.

But just because Martin was the youngest, that didn’t mean the urge to snap and bristle on someone else’s behalf had vanished altogether.

_(“There’s right, there’s wrong, then there’s family, and family comes first. If your family can’t trust you to be loyal, then no one can trust you at all.”)_

God only knew that out of all people in the world Douglas Richardson was the least defenseless man on earth (there were times, of course, where he most assuredly needed to be taken down a peg or two, Martin didn’t contest that), but there was a difference between good-natured sniping and precisely-aimed barbs meant to humiliate and bury themselves under the skin, needling meant to tear and wound.

There were few individuals in the world who ever possessed that kind of power. To abuse that power, especially when you had relinquished it in the first place…

There was one thing Martin couldn’t abide (even more than lack of leadership or woefully inadequate SOPs) and that was insults—low and bitter and laden with spite, thrown out for the sole purpose of seeing another person hurt.

Another person you knew exactly how to break.

_(“You don’t ever tell your brother or sister you hate them, Marty, even if you do.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because they love you—despite all the fighting and the teasing—and that’s the only thing you could ever say that would hurt them. So you don’t say it.”_

_“Never?”_

_“Never.”_

_“Because we’re family.”_

_“There’s a lad.”)_

There was right and there was wrong…

It was pure reaction, without any conscious thought, something that happened so rarely Martin himself was taken aback by how truly incensed he was.

Helena appeared to be just as shocked and lost the train of what had been a fairly vicious and far too personal disparagement against Douglas’s character—about his skills as a _father_ , for God’s sake! Helena had no children of her own, what right did she have to…

No, that wasn’t the point. The only way to cut Douglas to the quick was to use Miranda against him—precocious, bubbly Miranda, who had her father so thoroughly wrapped around her little figure it was almost pitiful. Miranda who adored her father, nearly as much as Douglas adored her… and Helena was using it as a cheap shot.

Martin didn’t remember specifically what he said—when he was sincerely outraged, he never really did—but it wasn’t the words that mattered. The impact was in the tone of his voice, the stony level of his gaze, and the grim rigidity to the set of his shoulders.

In the face of that, Martin found, that even the most acerbic of slights stood little chance. After all, what was the point in degradation if it was only going to be flung callously back in your face?

So when Helena stormed off, in a frightful blend of unbalanced fury and haughty derision borne purely out of self-preservation, Martin didn’t view her departure as a victory so much as a foregone conclusion.

He huffed out an aggravated breath and willed the tension from his clenched fingers.

“If I ask what brought that on,” Douglas said at length, strangely tentative, and dare Martin say, just a tad bewildered, “should I expect to have that rabid bulldog tenacity turned on me?”

Martin snorted, the last of the indignation fading to let the first fingers of self-consciousness bleed through. “Not unless you’ve done something to deserve it, no.”

For a moment, Douglas paused—hesitated even—and when he finally spoke again, his voice was thick with entirely too much nonchalance. Martin couldn’t remember ever hearing Douglas’s natural smoothness sound so forced.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Douglas said.

“I know,” Martin replied with a shrug. _There’s right, there’s wrong, and then there’s family…_ “But it’s what you do.”


End file.
